The following United States Patents exemplify the state of the art in fruit orientation devices:
U.S. Pat. No. 2,832,459
U.S. Pat. No. 2,832,460
U.S. Pat. No. 3,598,223
In the processing and packing of cut fruit halves, and in particular peach and pear halves, it is often necessary to properly orient large numbers of the fruit halves with the cut side up. This may be necessary for proper fruit orientation with respect to packing, or to facilitate visual inspection of the coring of the fruit halves, or the like. Also, the fruit halves must be oriented cut side up to facilitate washing away any debris or fruit fragments which result from the coring operation.
Prior art fruit orienting apparatus have generally relied upon lateral guide members or bumpers to direct the halved fruit pieces into orienting troughs or the like on an inclined shaker table. Generally speaking, the troughs support the fruit pieces in such a manner, and the walls of the trough are disposed in such a way, so that the fruit pieces must fall into the cut side up orientation. The flow of the fruit along the table is caused by the shaking thereof, as well as the inclination thereof. Usually the discharge end of the apparatus feeds a high speed conveyor which conducts the fruit to an inspection station or packing apparatus.
It has been found that the lateral guides or bumpers which direct the fruit into the troughs of the table at the upper end thereof occasionally cause several pieces of fruit to jam together, interrupting the flow of fruit down the table. Although the shaking of the table generally permits these jams to clear themselves, the jams do cause a delay or hiatus in the output of the fruit orienting apparatus. Due to the fact that the high speed belt is fed by the orienting apparatus, and often operates in velocities in excess of three hundred feet per minute, a one or two second hiatus in the output of the fruit orienting apparatus will cause five or ten feet of the high speed belt to be empty. Any empty gaps on the high speed belt, which feeds the remainder of the processing and packing operation, correspond to a loss of productivity in the entire packing operation.
Furthermore, it has been found that no matter how well designed have been the prior art devices, it was still possible for some fruit halves to move completely through the fruit orienting machine in a cut face down position, and remain in that position until discharge.